Late night nostalgia.

The almost forgotten half-empty bottle of cologne slipped out of his hands as he watched it crash onto the bathroom floor, flooding the tile cracks with aromatic memories from his not too distant past. It was frightening how one smell of that cologne conjured up all the emotions tied to her—not of the whole duration of the relationship—but of a very specific time early on, when things were innocuous and optimistic and full of potential.

*

He sat down on her wicker footstool and looked up with his eyes while keeping his head down. His arms were wrapped snugly around his knees. The yellow reflection of the bathroom lights bounced off the mirrors and the tinged white walls glowed with a fleeting evanescence that crept away moments later. The strands of long hair that flowed beautifully in front of him were surveyed in detail to take notice of every shapely golden contour. He reached out and rested his hand on her hip. Her head swiveled back towards him as she released a lingering smile and then calmly continued brushing her hair as if he was only there in spirit. “You smell good,” she said, directed towards his reflection. Rising to his feet and wrapping his right arm around her waist, he admired her profile in the side mirror to her left and noticed her blue eyes were especially poignant at that moment. There was a comfortable silence and an unspoken communion between the two as they watched each other through their reflections. “Ready?” she asked. And with a simple nod of his head they swayed out of the room hand in hand. The lights went dark, and the memory fades.